100%: the Story of a Patriot eBook

The poet never made a sound. Peter got one glimpse
of his face in the blazing white light, and in spite
of the fact that it was smashed and bloody, Peter
read Tom Duggan’s resolve—­he would
die before they would get a moan out of him.
Each time the lash fell you could see a quiver all
over his form; but there was never a sound, and he
stood, hugging the tree in a convulsive grip.
They lashed him until the whip was spattering blood
all over them, until blood was running to the ground.
They had taken the precaution to bring along a doctor
with a little black case, and he now stepped up and
whispered to the master of ceremonies. They unfastened
Duggan, and broke the grip of his arms about the tree,
and dumped him down beside Glikas.

Next came the turn of Donald Gordon, the Socialist
Quaker, which brought a bit of cheap drama. Donald
took his religion seriously; he was always shouting
his anti-war sentiments in the name of Jesus, which
made him especially obnoxious. Now he saw a chance
to get off one of his theatrical stunts; he raised
his two manacled hands into the air as if he were
praying, and shouted in piercing tones: “Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

A murmur started in the crowd; you could hear it mounting
to a roar. “Blasphemy!” they cried.
“Stop his dirty mouth!” It was the same
mouth that had been heard on a hundred platforms, denouncing
the war and those who made money out of the war.
They were here now, the men who had been denounced,
the younger members of the Chamber of Commerce and
the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association,
the best people of the city, those who were saving
the country, and charging no more than the service
was worth. So they roared with fury at this sacreligious
upstart. A man whose mask was a joke, because
he was so burly and hearty that everybody in the crowd
knew him, took up the bloody whip. It was Billy
Nash, secretary of the “Improve America League,”
and the crowd shouted, “Go to it, Billy!
Good eye, old boy!” Donald Gordon might tell
God that Billy Nash didn’t know what he was
doing, but Billy thought that he knew, and he meant
before he got thru to convince Donald that he knew.
It didn’t take very long, because there was
nothing much to the young Quaker but voice, and he
fainted at the fourth or fifth stroke, and after the
twentieth stroke the doctor interfered.

Then came the turn of Grady, secretary of the I. W.
W., and here a terrible thing happened. Grady,
watching this scene from one of the cars, had grown
desperate, and when they loosed the handcuffs to get
off his coat, he gave a sudden wrench and broke free,
striking down one man after another. He had been
brought up in the lumber country, and his strength
was amazing, and before the crowd quite realized it,
he was leaping between two of the cars. A dozen
men sprang upon him from a dozen directions, and he
went down in the midst of a wild melee. They
pinned him with his face mashed into the dirt, and
from the crowd there rose a roar as from wild beasts
in the night-time,